You might also want to use half shortening (Crisco) and half butter rather than all butter to get stiffer icing that will stand up. Add a little butter flavoring if you want. I usually double the vanilla in my recipe. I suppose you could use butter flavored Crisco a well.

I've found half shortening/half butter still tastes good and is a good compromise between frosting workability, taste, and texture.

My in-laws hosted a Swedish Smorgasbord every Christmas. When my father-in-law passed away, we found his Swedish cookbook and knowing that my brother-in-law would also want it, I proceeded to record all information on the hand written notes and loose papers that were stuffed into the cookbook. (I found an identical cookbook online for myself). The Swedish meatball recipe was the most sought after. So I was going through the notes, most of which were shopping lists, and found a torn out page from a magazine. The article was about a couple, one Swedish and one Italian, who each cooked their family meatball recipes and conducted a taste test. I scanned through and read the comments from the Tasters. One comment read, "These are f***ing good!" I was taken aback. What magazine is this from? So I look at the margins of the page and there was no indication. I flip over the page and look at the margins, and it was blank as well. Then I notice the picture on the back page. It is an X-ray photo of a suitcase, and in the suitcase are some adult toys. Whoa!! Clearly, he wanted the magazine purely for the meatball recipes! Haha!

Does anyone else have a funny stories to share about adventures with cookbooks?

When my husband was in med school we would get a rotisserie chicken and as he was separating the pieces he would point out all the muscles and vessels to me. After a while, I had to tell him to to stop. It's my food, not my 9th grade science frog dissection or med school cadaver.

I think experienced chefs do need some understanding of what cuts of meat correspond to what part of the animal and to some extent what function that muscle group had so we know what is tough, marbled, etc. and how best to prepare it. I'm more than happy to think my meat comes from the grocery store in Styrofoam trays wrapped in plastic.

I like to look at the comments for recipes to see how they turn out. I HATE when people comment that a recipe didn't turn out but they did, X instead of Y, decreased Z, increased A, omitted B, etc. You didn't make the recipe you are commenting on. How do I know that the recipe didn't turn out because of something the commenter did?

My mom once got a bread maker for $10 from a co-worker who said it didn't work. My mom used it and it was fine. She asked what the co-worker had done. The co-worker said, she didn't want extra sugar or salt in her bread so she omitted them. She essentially made a bread, water, and yeast brick.

Granted, there are just as many comments, saying, "I made this and next time I would add more sugar" or the like. Those comments are helpful.

I'm glad to hear about the apricots!! I always blanch and remove the skins like peaches, but what a slimy mess.

I purposely put cranberries in my freezer in the fall so I can make peach cranberry preserves and strawberry cranberry preserves.

Do you know if this is safe for processing?

I don't know what the consistency or thickness of your product is, but I guess you could put more powdered sugar in and make a frosting.

Serve it over ice cream?

Layer it with cake to make a trifle? Use it as a cake filling?

The current thinking is that with the new varieties of tomatoes, the acid levels are not guaranteed so ReaLemon bottled lemon juice or vinegar needs to be added to ensure the proper acidity.

Check the labels on bottled lemon juice as well if you are using it to adjust acidity. So far, I've found only ReaLemon lists and controls their acidity level. I get bottled lemon juice from Costco (Volcano) and it is not acidity controlled. I contacted the manufacturer to confirm this. I use it for jams and jellies but I wouldn't use it for things where the acidity is questionable for food safety.

Oh, no! :) My son would love that. His favorite is Cowboy Candy (Candied Jalapenos). He likes to eat one, run around the house with his tongue hanging out, then come back for more.

I agree about the audience. The majority of our gifts go to people who want strawberry jam or grape jam. That's it. BORING! I don't want to make 100 jars of strawberry jam. I want to make strawberry pinot noir, strawberry balsamic, strawberry raspberry, strawberry mint, strawberry margarita...

I just got Tart and Sweet and Paul Virant's Preservation Kitchen. I have not pickled anything but quail eggs. I do hundreds of jars of jam each year for gifts, so I look for simple recipes that I can make quickly in bulk. I get bored of making the same jams, so I also look for variety.

So far, Chef Virant's Rhubarb Beer jam has not made it to my list. I just don't know how I would use it.

You can use quail eggs for baking just like chicken eggs, but they are richer and the yolk to white ratio is higher. Cakes turn out heavier and denser. It's not a problem necessarily, it's just a matter of changing your expectations. I typically substitute quail eggs for one egg in cakes and all eggs in brownies and cookies. It takes about 5-7 quail eggs per large chicken egg depending on the size of the quail eggs.

We recently made quail eggs in prosciutto nests from Martha Stewart. Just bake slices of prosciutto in muffin tins with a raw quail egg inside until the whites are firm. We made them for a wine tasting party we had (paired with Chardonnay or sparkling) and someone called them fancy bacon and eggs.

Quail will lay from 5 weeks old until death. My hunch is really, they lay themselves to death if not fed and cared for properly (can you imagine the toll of having one baby a year for your whole life?). We have been raising them for meat and eggs for a little over a year now and before that we had them as pets.

The absolute best thing I've found for using the eggs raw is quail egg scissors from Korin. Of course, it's only something you would get if you have and use a lot of quail eggs. They cut the shells cleanly (warm or room temperature eggs work better than cold eggs) without as many tiny bits of shell. Plus they are fun to use.

You could join the website and post to see if there's anyone that raises them near you. But for peafowl, you'll probably not find one that was raised for meat purposes.

In the Chicago area, there's a infamous meat market, Czimer's. They have all kinds of exotic meats. I say it's infamous because there have been rumors of it being shut down at one time for having live tigers in the back waiting for butchering.

I drive by it frequently, but I've never been in it. My friend has purchased bear burgers there, but it didn't go over very well with them.

I would think they are way to expensive to eat. Chicks can be $50-300 each. But my guess would be they are not much different from pheasant based on the way they are raised and kept.

I did find a board posting with a post (the very last one) that has some information. That gentleman who posted the last post is a breeder and keeper of exotic birds and he has a lot of knowledge based on other posts he's commented on.

They also posted a link, which I haven't checked, on various exotic meats.

http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/616...

It's definitely a keeper and so easy. If you can find the boxed, shelf-stable tofu, it's instant dessert that you can keep on hand in case of surprise guests. I've been told milk chocolate chips don't work as well. I haven't tried it. I've always used semi-sweet. Look for fresh tofu that is recommended for smoothies and such.

Years ago, my friend made a chocolate tofu pie and a peanutbutter chocolate tofu pie. The chocolate tofu pie is a staple at our house (2 boxes silken firm tofu + 2 cups melted chocolate chips blended together and put into an chocolate wafer crust). Very simple and I have fooled many people who say they don't eat tofu.

I don't have the peanutbutter version though and my searches for the recipe have come up with poor results. I remember it had a chocolate layer on top. I don't know if it was also tofu or not.

Does anyone have one or can someone point me in the right direction?

Although I often use them interchangeably, you are correct about "jam" vs. "preserves". My thoughts (completely my opinion here!) are in the scheme of things:
jelly - juice only, lots of sugar, pectin added
preserves - chunks of fruit, with a syrup/jelly type component as well, moderate sugar, maybe pectin added
jam- fruit more cooked down, more even consistency, sugar amount varies, maybe pectin added
fruit butter- fruit cooked way down and broken down, sugar amount varies, typically no pectin

I don't have a lot of experience with butters except apple. I try to stay away from recipes that require overnight maceration. When we preserve, we do mass quantities (100+ jars) so, I quick and easy is what I'm after because we are racing against the fruit spoiling. Off season, I like to play around with recipes.

You could freeze them, but I've never had much luck with defrosted strawberries. Cooking is fine, but they are best eaten partially frozen in fruit salads or in smoothies. I'm sure kids would love them frozen as an alternative to popsicles in the Summer!

I would like to have some of Thomas Keller's brownies. :)

I agree, I love the crunchy edges which is why I noticed the Pam/oil thing. But I do understand the hard edges issue too. For me, that happens if I over bake them or usually if we don't eat them fast enough and they dry out. For my family, a 8x8 or 9x9 is too small but a 9x13 is too much.

Lately, I have been using quail eggs to make brownies and they come out extra fudgy. I think you could get the same effect by using an extra egg yolk or 2 yolks subbed for one egg.

If you use Pam or cooking spray in the pan, if the oil collects in the corners that can make the corners crunchy as well. Try Crisco or solid shortening.

Sorry, it was 8 cups strawberries, 6 cups of sugar, 2 T lemon juice for the strawberry jam without pectin. Too early. Hadn't had my coffee yet.

I chopped up the strawberries, but I've made jam also where I left them halved or quartered (I cut off moldy parts of forgotten berries) added lemon juice by eye and sugar by eye and just cooked it. I didn't BWB the results, but I don't see why you couldn't.

We made stuffed french toast one day (2 pieces of french toast, smeared one with mascarpone cheese and one with jam and made a sandwich).

Strawberries don't need pectin for jam. I just made the recipe out of the Ball book that called for 8 cups of strawberries, 4 cups of sugar, and 2 T of lemon juice. I only had 4 cups when I cut the strawberries so I halved the recipe. It worked out fine (no pectin here). I cooked it down until the jam sheeted off the spoon. Then BWB canned 3 jars.

Using pectin is far quicker and would have a better yield: 5 cups strawberries, pectin (1 package dry or 1/3 cup), 2 T lemon juice. Boil hard 1 minute, add 7 cups of sugar. Boil again for 1 minute. BWB can for 10 minutes. This yields about 7 jars.

It's best not to change the ratios of a pectin recipe. A fruit and sugar recipe you can change and just cook appropriately until you get the consistency you want. I believe both have the same shelf life unopened, but lower sugar recipes have shorter shelf lives once opened and refrigerated.

For some reason, your mention of onions made me think of steamed bread like you would use for Peking Duck. In really fancy traditional Chinese dinners, they had sui gee yuk (excuse my spelling!) which is pork belly in a sauce that is similar to American BBQ Sauce. They sometime served it with the steamed buns. So instead of Peking Duck, you would have a slice of thick pork belly (bacon essentially). The flavor would be similar to what is being discussed here.

I'm thinking go for it. It sounds good as long as you change your expectations before you bite in.

My kids would eat it. My mother would cringe in horror and scold me for not making char siu from scratch (or packets or char sui concentrated paste).

I say, make do with what you have and what you can get.

I raise the quail for eggs and meat in my garage. Our house isn't zoned for chickens but quail are gamebirds so I have a $10 license and since they are caged, I can keep them in the garage and no one really knows. Shhh...don't tell! Anyway, they are pretty neat pets.

I get about 17-19 eggs a day. The yolk to white ratio is higher than chicken eggs, so baking with them can be tricky. I've used 7 quail eggs and 2 chicken eggs for cakes with pretty good results. Otherwise, they come out much heavier and richer than normal. Not a bad thing as long as you change your expectations.

We got a pair of quail egg scissors which makes breaking raw eggs open much easier, so using them is a lot easier also.

I will have to try poaching them. I haven't had much experience poaching and so far I've been really good at making egg drop soup instead! Practice makes perfect and we have a new stove so I will hopefully, have more control over the water.

Thanks! I will have to try this. Currently, I put ice on them while hot, then roll them and peel under running water. Works great for the first 50 or so, but then they are too cool and the "egg shrinking from the shell" effect goes away. Either that it just feels harder to peel after 50...haha!

I have a lot of quail eggs and they are a pain to peel. I just want to make egg salad with them, but is there a way to hard cook the eggs without the shells? Since I'm chopping them up, they don't need to be pretty. Is hard poaching my only option?

I've looked at the Eggies contraption, but they sound like more trouble than they are worth.

There are about 7 quail eggs to 1 large chicken egg, so you can understand my desire to peel first. It takes me about 5 minutes to peel a dozen and I've had lots of practice!